Big Maggy Backstedt has been giving it full gas getting back to form in time for his first big test of the year – le Grand Boucle. Our PEZ Diarist gets us up to speed through the days leading up to, and beginning this Tour…

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I left for the tour on Wednesday afternoon, and got to the hotel at dinner time. It’s strange how when you get to the tour everything feels different. The days leading up to the Tour are always very stressful. You need to be at different meetings and medical checks and so on. It is to the point where you are stressing to get time to ride your bike.

Thursday morning wake up at 8am for UCI blood test, then you need to get some food in and get changed and head out on your bike as quickly as possible. I managed to get 3 hours in. Then quickly had lunch and massage before it was time for team presentation. After all that I was just ready for bed.

No time for games before the ever-important Prologue – it was all head down riding for PEZ-Man Maggie.

Friday
We have more or less the same scenario as on Thursday except for that the presentation is swapped for a medical check and a press conference. This time around it wasn’t too much fun, due to the Spanish story that came about on Thursday. I have tried to leave all of this chaos out as I need to concentrate
on my job at hand and I can’t afford to waste any energy on anything but riding. And I am sure that the proper authorities will deal with this in the right way.

Saturday
D-day! Finally this race is getting underway. I went out to try the prologue course in the morning. Then I went back to the hotel for some food and rest. When it was time for me… I was feeling really up for it. Unfortunately I only got 1km in to the stage before I ended up with some mechanical problems. My seat came loose. I can tell you that it’s not easy to ride fast when you have to try and balance yourself at the same time as you try to put out max power. I was feeling good though which is always nice.

Still returning from his first half of the season ailments, Maggie didn’t look bad at the head of affairs!

Sunday
Good to get the first road stage under the belt. As I suspected there was a group that went away quite quickly and then we held them on a good distance. So as usual the first stage came down to a sprint. I was feeling good, but ended up being in the wrong position and got boxed in. Better luck
next time.